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marymcarter21's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
olivetree614's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Murder, Drug abuse, and Racial slurs
emiliosandoz's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
this literally was everything i could ask for in this book. this is exactly how i would've written it if i'd done it. i'm deeply in love with this story.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug use, Rape, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Drug abuse, Death, and Death of parent
crysania's review
5.0
What can I say about this book, really? This was a re-read. A re-read, in fact, of many many times. I've lost count of how many times I've read this book since it first came out in the early 1990s. The book tells the story of Erik's (the Phantom of the Opera) life from birth to death. Kay does an amazing job with taking those little hints Leroux gives about Erik's life and expanding them out into believable sections that ultimately shaped the man to become who is seen in the Leroux novel (which really chronicles only the last 6 months of his life). This story is amazingly beautiful and every time I read it I am sucked into a story so vivid, so wondrous, so heartbreaking, that I end up weeping at the end. I highly recommend it.
emmarder's review
5.0
GAS. Ignore that the last chapters are fanfic - Susie HITS THE SPOT every damn time.
chazumsiow's review against another edition
5.0
My favourite (unofficial) Phantom of The Opera book. Absolutely wonderful in every way and tells us the sometimes sad, bittersweet but always fascinating start to life of Erik, the Opera Ghost that lives beneath the Paris Opera House. It tells us about how awful his childhood was, how terrible people were to him and how he came to be the genius composer that we know. I could real this book OVER AND OVER and it’s well known by Phans as the book to read if you love Phantom. It delves deeper into his life and loves, his friends and his amazing brain. Read this now!
cuddlesome's review against another edition
4.0
Trigger warning for discussion of child abuse, death, attempted rape, animal death, drugs, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting because this book is packed with so much dark content.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL but I have a lot of thoughts.
I guess as with a lot of reviewers here I have to agree with the general "They had us in the first half, not gonna lie" mentality. This book started off with a bang and maintained that momentum for the first few hundred pages or so.
I really enjoyed the dark slice of life setup of Erik's childhood/teenage years. If the entire novel had been just that I would've been golden. There is not a single moment where your heart doesn't break for this kid. His mom doesn't come around to truly caring for him until it's too late, his dog gets murdered, he nearly gets sexually assaulted (thankfully he kills the near-rapist), etc.
I had to physically put the book down and just take a breath a couple of times. By and large my favorite sad part was when Erik's one request for a birthday gift was having his mother give him kisses. When that was referenced again towards the conclusion of the novel my soul shattered.
I also really enjoyed the entire part of the novel where Erik worked for Giovanni. It allowed him some true happiness, at least for a while, and damn it if he didn't deserve that. Of course it all came crashing down eventually, inevitably, when he was forced to reveal his face. But you know what they say: "Without the bitter the sweet isn't as sweet."
My one big gripe with that bit is that Giovanni quite suddenly sided with his daughter when it came to Erik taking off his mask after MONTHS of not saying anything about it. It felt abrupt.
Still, these sections were by and large my absolute favorites and kept me very engrossed. Erik is massively talented, yes, but he's also awkward and hostile and just struggling to survive. He elicits total sympathy from me.
Then he grew up and it started to lose me.
Oh, the writing is still great in the second half, captivating, that's why I'm rating it so high despite my qualms, but the content takes a complete nosedive. Erik goes Anakin Skywalker for a bit and is just immensely talented at everything he does and it's a lot harder to sympathize with him when you feel like he can walk on water.
Ironically, Nadir aka the Persian aka daroga, who was by and large my favorite character in the Leroux novel, grated incessantly on me in this one. I can't quite put my finger on why. I think it might have something to do with having to relive the "Whoa, Erik is both terrifying and amazing" reaction from a narrator for the third time in a row. Like, yes, we get it, he's great, move on.
Only when Erik is finally getting to be older and relies heavily on morphine as a pain reliever did I start to feel bad for him again. But man oh man if he didn't continue to try my patience with how he treated Christine. Their relationship is pretty toxic from square one no matter which version you look at, excepting perhaps that 90s miniseries with Charles Dance, but this really took it to another level. Pro tip: if you want me to continue to like your titular character, having him contemplating raping his love interest isn't a great help.
Also, brief intermission from ranting about Erik and Christine; he has a cat? And I love cats as much as the next person, but that was the one instance where I felt that the "too fanficcy" criticism I've seen levied at this novel was really justified.
In my humble opinion, there was no need to see Christine and Erik's relationship presented in this story. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Their relationship in both Leroux's original novel and Lord Andy's musical adaptation is more than good.
I was not mentally prepared to be subjected to a twenty year old woman continuously being compared to a child and the insistence that she needs a husband who's also going to be a daddy to her. How in the world has the characterization of Christine backslid so much since the original novel when this was written a near century later? It feels demeaning to have her wailing to herself, "OH I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOO I AM JUST A DUMB CHILD" and have that further reinforced by Erik's fatherly language towards her. It's one thing for ALW Erik to occasionally croon "child" and another for Kay's Erik to just point and go, "Look at this dumb idiot infant."
Then there's the whole "she looks like Erik's mom" thing. Despite not finding it all that disturbing--after all of the far more distressing content it was difficult to do more than just shrug and go, "Yeah, okay, Oedipal complex is here now."--I was bothered nonetheless. Mostly because it felt entirely unnecessary. Instead of adding another dimension to Erik and Christine's relationship I just felt that it took away from them. It cheapens his devotion to her as her own person.
ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, I still enjoyed some parts of Erik and Christine's interactions. It's really impossible not to enjoy the sharp contrast between them. The kiss that combined both the Leroux "kiss on the forehead" and the ALW "repeated mouth kiss" was REALLY fantastic. Suddenly all of the BS I went through felt justified for that moment alone. It's heart-melting.
When Erik willingly gives Christine up to Raoul it was actually really sweet. I liked that a lot.
Annnnd it would've been even nicer if Raoul actually consented to his wishes instead of refusing to send the damn wedding invitation so Christine wouldn't run back to the opera house to fuck a dying Erik.
To quote Adam Driver as Abraham H. Parnassus,"Filled her belly with my festering seed and soiled your boy, he is my final revenge."
My only other commentary on that ending is that it's a better "Erik is the baby daddy" ending than Love Never Dies but that's not exactly hard to do.
So, overall, still really happy I read this book, happy that I own two copies of it (I bought a second one because I wanted that bookmark from the first printing... yeah, I'm that kind of a collector) but when I return to it it's probably going to be for that first half and a few choice pieces from the second half. It's very intense and beautifully written and I can see why it's still a topic of conversation in the Phandom so long after the fact.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL but I have a lot of thoughts.
I guess as with a lot of reviewers here I have to agree with the general "They had us in the first half, not gonna lie" mentality. This book started off with a bang and maintained that momentum for the first few hundred pages or so.
I really enjoyed the dark slice of life setup of Erik's childhood/teenage years. If the entire novel had been just that I would've been golden. There is not a single moment where your heart doesn't break for this kid. His mom doesn't come around to truly caring for him until it's too late, his dog gets murdered, he nearly gets sexually assaulted (thankfully he kills the near-rapist), etc.
I had to physically put the book down and just take a breath a couple of times. By and large my favorite sad part was when Erik's one request for a birthday gift was having his mother give him kisses. When that was referenced again towards the conclusion of the novel my soul shattered.
I also really enjoyed the entire part of the novel where Erik worked for Giovanni. It allowed him some true happiness, at least for a while, and damn it if he didn't deserve that. Of course it all came crashing down eventually, inevitably, when he was forced to reveal his face. But you know what they say: "Without the bitter the sweet isn't as sweet."
My one big gripe with that bit is that Giovanni quite suddenly sided with his daughter when it came to Erik taking off his mask after MONTHS of not saying anything about it. It felt abrupt.
Still, these sections were by and large my absolute favorites and kept me very engrossed. Erik is massively talented, yes, but he's also awkward and hostile and just struggling to survive. He elicits total sympathy from me.
Then he grew up and it started to lose me.
Oh, the writing is still great in the second half, captivating, that's why I'm rating it so high despite my qualms, but the content takes a complete nosedive. Erik goes Anakin Skywalker for a bit and is just immensely talented at everything he does and it's a lot harder to sympathize with him when you feel like he can walk on water.
Ironically, Nadir aka the Persian aka daroga, who was by and large my favorite character in the Leroux novel, grated incessantly on me in this one. I can't quite put my finger on why. I think it might have something to do with having to relive the "Whoa, Erik is both terrifying and amazing" reaction from a narrator for the third time in a row. Like, yes, we get it, he's great, move on.
Only when Erik is finally getting to be older and relies heavily on morphine as a pain reliever did I start to feel bad for him again. But man oh man if he didn't continue to try my patience with how he treated Christine. Their relationship is pretty toxic from square one no matter which version you look at, excepting perhaps that 90s miniseries with Charles Dance, but this really took it to another level. Pro tip: if you want me to continue to like your titular character, having him contemplating raping his love interest isn't a great help.
Also, brief intermission from ranting about Erik and Christine; he has a cat? And I love cats as much as the next person, but that was the one instance where I felt that the "too fanficcy" criticism I've seen levied at this novel was really justified.
In my humble opinion, there was no need to see Christine and Erik's relationship presented in this story. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Their relationship in both Leroux's original novel and Lord Andy's musical adaptation is more than good.
I was not mentally prepared to be subjected to a twenty year old woman continuously being compared to a child and the insistence that she needs a husband who's also going to be a daddy to her. How in the world has the characterization of Christine backslid so much since the original novel when this was written a near century later? It feels demeaning to have her wailing to herself, "OH I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOO I AM JUST A DUMB CHILD" and have that further reinforced by Erik's fatherly language towards her. It's one thing for ALW Erik to occasionally croon "child" and another for Kay's Erik to just point and go, "Look at this dumb idiot infant."
Then there's the whole "she looks like Erik's mom" thing. Despite not finding it all that disturbing--after all of the far more distressing content it was difficult to do more than just shrug and go, "Yeah, okay, Oedipal complex is here now."--I was bothered nonetheless. Mostly because it felt entirely unnecessary. Instead of adding another dimension to Erik and Christine's relationship I just felt that it took away from them. It cheapens his devotion to her as her own person.
ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, I still enjoyed some parts of Erik and Christine's interactions. It's really impossible not to enjoy the sharp contrast between them. The kiss that combined both the Leroux "kiss on the forehead" and the ALW "repeated mouth kiss" was REALLY fantastic. Suddenly all of the BS I went through felt justified for that moment alone. It's heart-melting.
When Erik willingly gives Christine up to Raoul it was actually really sweet. I liked that a lot.
Annnnd it would've been even nicer if Raoul actually consented to his wishes instead of refusing to send the damn wedding invitation so Christine wouldn't run back to the opera house to fuck a dying Erik.
To quote Adam Driver as Abraham H. Parnassus,"Filled her belly with my festering seed and soiled your boy, he is my final revenge."
My only other commentary on that ending is that it's a better "Erik is the baby daddy" ending than Love Never Dies but that's not exactly hard to do.
So, overall, still really happy I read this book, happy that I own two copies of it (I bought a second one because I wanted that bookmark from the first printing... yeah, I'm that kind of a collector) but when I return to it it's probably going to be for that first half and a few choice pieces from the second half. It's very intense and beautifully written and I can see why it's still a topic of conversation in the Phandom so long after the fact.
sammy234's review against another edition
5.0
I'm still going to give this book five stars, even if I found the last half of the book not as emotional or well written as the first half. I don't think anyone can top this retelling. It is beautifully written and truly captures the heart and soul of the Phantom, whom I've always been fascinated by but who has always remained only half formed in my mind, never fully developed. Susan brought him to life in this novel, and allowed the reader to follow him through his tragic life, from the time he was born, hideous and disfigured, to the end of his tale, when he meets Christine.
If not for the near instant devotion he gave to Christine, which didn't really make sense given the way Susan Kay portrayed his character, I would see no flaws in this book. But their relationship, and the Phantom's subsequent attachment to a girl who even Christine herself acknowledges as fickle and childish, made me enjoy the final chapters a bit less.
I wanted more depth in their relationship, like there was depth in the Phantom's relationships with his mother, and his teacher, and Nadir, his friend. I still bought their love story by the end, but I can't help but wondering if it was out of intense desire for this novel to be perfect to me. They definitely had a connection, but it was not grown slowly and beautifully. Instead it was immediate and almost made me resent Christine for not being an interesting enough character and being so easily able to win the Phantom's love.
Raoul was also annoying as hell in this adaption. Whenever I watch the Royal Albert Hall version of the play, I always have a certain fondness for Raoul. The way Hadley Frasier portrays him makes me actually believe he was a worthy rival for Christine's affections. When I watch the play, I can understand why near the end (when she finally finds out the Phantom is not her dad, which isn't a plot point in this book by the way, thank God) she is torn between them. In this book, I wanted Raoul to be killed off about as much as the Phantom did. He was such a sniveling, boy man, and since Christine was already plenty sniveling, she needed someone grown up, who could pull her up into the grown up world with him. And while the Phantom does remain a perpetual child in many respects(due to his trauma), he is a lot more grown up than either of them.
Regardless of my complaints, this really is a brilliant book. It's the story of man who above all else, wants to be loved, but can never admit it, and a faithless girl who finally does, after she gets the man she thought she wanted.
TW: Murder, torture, child abuse
If not for the near instant devotion he gave to Christine, which didn't really make sense given the way Susan Kay portrayed his character, I would see no flaws in this book. But their relationship, and the Phantom's subsequent attachment to a girl who even Christine herself acknowledges as fickle and childish, made me enjoy the final chapters a bit less.
I wanted more depth in their relationship, like there was depth in the Phantom's relationships with his mother, and his teacher, and Nadir, his friend. I still bought their love story by the end, but I can't help but wondering if it was out of intense desire for this novel to be perfect to me. They definitely had a connection, but it was not grown slowly and beautifully. Instead it was immediate and almost made me resent Christine for not being an interesting enough character and being so easily able to win the Phantom's love.
Raoul was also annoying as hell in this adaption. Whenever I watch the Royal Albert Hall version of the play, I always have a certain fondness for Raoul. The way Hadley Frasier portrays him makes me actually believe he was a worthy rival for Christine's affections. When I watch the play, I can understand why near the end (when she finally finds out the Phantom is not her dad, which isn't a plot point in this book by the way, thank God) she is torn between them. In this book, I wanted Raoul to be killed off about as much as the Phantom did. He was such a sniveling, boy man, and since Christine was already plenty sniveling, she needed someone grown up, who could pull her up into the grown up world with him. And while the Phantom does remain a perpetual child in many respects(due to his trauma), he is a lot more grown up than either of them.
Regardless of my complaints, this really is a brilliant book. It's the story of man who above all else, wants to be loved, but can never admit it, and a faithless girl who finally does, after she gets the man she thought she wanted.
TW: Murder, torture, child abuse